Chatterbot Collection

SASSY Chatbot Wins with Wit

When you sit down for an online chat with computer scientist Rollo Carpenter, you’re not quite sure if it’s him on the other end or his virtual alter ego, a chatbot named George. And that, in a nutshell, is the point of Carpenter’s research. Carpenter’s work is inspired by Japanese Roboticist Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley theory. In 1970, Mori asserted that, as robots become increasingly human-like in appearance, movement, and behavior, they will illicit emotional responses from human beings that border on human-to-human empathy levels. In discussing digital immortalization and a cultural renaissance by way of virtual reality, Carpenter views advanced chatbots as harbingers of a new era in machine learning. “We intend to get very close indeed to the Uncanny Valley,” he says. (pdf)